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Ever Wanted Your Own Land Speeder?
An anonymous reader writes "Be the first on your block to drive on of these! a StarWars Land Speeder. This used to be a 1988 Ford Escort and only has 880 miles since built." This is a surprisingly impressive conversion.
880 miles AFTER it became a starwars cruiser. 100k BEFORE it did.
The donor car it was built on actually has 108k on it - the "Speeder" after built though, only has gone 880 miles.
It says that it is street legal, and I don't doubt it. It looks like it has the proper lights on front and back, as well as mirrors and a windshield. That's pretty much all that is required for a vehicle to be street legal int he US -- if he were manufacturing these as an auto dealer he'd probably have to do more safety/impact tests of the body, but as-is, it's legally a Ford Escort.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
I don't think any of those things make the car illegal exactly. But you would be responsible for the damage caused by your mods. To summarize point by point (using what I know of tennessee law - not much):
if I want to install an impaling device on the front of the car, am I allowed to? or what about the always fun side-mounted scythe blades?
This will at least require a red rag to be tied to the end of them so other motorists can easily obtain depth perception from all angles on them.
if I want to install a 10 foot tall flagpole that will make my car 99% flip over in a turn when there's wind, can I do it? if I take my average car, install a couple thousand pounds worth of 'mods' and its braking distance shoots up fourfold, is it a problem? what about being able to evade an accident? if my 'mods' make my car drive like a barge in a river, is that ok?
Well, I suppose I have seen some form of all of those at one time so I would say it's legal.
what about if sharp pieces of my 'mod' become unglued when going over a bump at speed, take off, and shatter the windshield of whomever is following me?
This would be the same as if anything you were hauling was not securly fastened down - you are responsible for damages (even up to involutary manslaughter)
what about seatbelts? what if it rolls over?
Seatbealts are required (unless it is an antique). Rollover is worried the same as a convertable (your own damn problem, did you really think the windshield will save your puny head if the car flips?(note: the last line was not aimed at you - it is the govt's response if you die))
Mostly similar to what our other rights are supposed to be (but are increasingly not). We have the right to bear arms - not shoot people. Just because something CAN do an illegal thing, even is LIKELY to do an illegal thing doesn't make the knowlege/device illegal, only the action is illegal.
I do know that most kit cars are road legal here, it's quite a popular pastime for hot-rodders to assemble them in the area where I live. And this is of course why things such as the DMCA make many of us so mad.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
You saw wheels in the movie? You were smokin' the good stuff. The orginal speeder was mounted on a long horizontal boom wich was hidden by the camera view and is why it bounced a lot. No wheels.
Most insurance agents NEVER look at a cehicle when they insure it. All they want is the Make, model, year, etc. If it has the frame of an Escort, it is an Escort, as that is the VIN number that is used to register it.
I can recall watching a documentary about the newer versions of the original trilogy and the special effects they cleaned up. In the original footage they smeared Vaseline on the lens to blur the undercarriage of the Landspeeder to hide the wheels. They made the hover look more convincing when they did the clean-up a few years ago.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.